Evening Shade

LOS ANGELES -- If you were boating on the Intracoastal up near Jupiter on Sunday afternoon, you might have been an unwitting part of television`s fall preview press tour. Burt Reynolds soon will have to leave his Palm Beach County home for a new job, but he wants to squeeze in as much Florida sunshine as possible before his departure. So rather than fly to the West Coast to promote his new CBS series Evening Shade, Reynolds had the TV press in to his Jupiter home, via satellite. While 100-plus writers fired questions at him from a frigid ballroom 3,000 mies away, Reynolds responded from his sun-drenched gazebo as weekend boaters cruised by in the background.

Carol Burnett makes a guest appearance on Evening Shade at 8 tonight on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12 and Burt Reynolds could use the help. Ratings for last week's season premiere were distressingly low and CBS is concerned there is an anti-Burt backlash because of the way he has maligned Loni Anderson. If the ratings don't improve, the series could be in a less desirable time slot. - TOM JICHA

Florida State University`s No. 1 fan in Hollywood, Burt Reynolds, gives Seminole football coach Bobby Bowden some prime-time exposure in Evening Shade tonight at 8 on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12. Bowden visits Arkansas to recruit one of Wood Newton`s players only to discover that he`s as off the mark as Bowden`s kickers inevitably are against the University of Miami. ----TOM JICHA

Original fare is slim tonight. But two colorful characters from Evening Shade, Harlan (Charles Durning) and Merleen (Ann Wedgeworth), are the focus of a two-part unsold pilot at 8:30 on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12. Part II of Harland and Merleen airs next week. For sports fans, the Baseball All-Star Gala is at 8 on ESPN, telecast from Baltimore, the site of Tuesday`s game. -- PAULETTE EVERETT

The attempted rehabilitation of Burt Reynolds' image continues in full force on CBS, which is concerned about the erosion of ratings for Evening Shade in the wake of Reynolds' nasty divorce from Loni Anderson. At 9 tonight on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12, Reynolds plays a swell guy to a youth baseball team in The Man From Left Field, a smarmy takeoff on the Bad News Bears. - TOM JICHA

The reality has fulfilled the promise in Evening Shade. From the moment it was announced last spring, before the first scene was shot, even before the first line of dialogue was written, the new CBS series was blessed -- some might say cursed -- with the designation of potentially the best new series of this season. There was ample justification for great expectations. The creators, the husband-wife team of Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason are responsibile for Designing Women, which is tardily being recognized as one of TV`s brightest series.

Michael Jeter has given up skydiving. The actor best known for his role as the nerdy assistant coach on Evening Shade says that after a year of taking part in the daring sport, "A plane I used for diving crashed. Several people I knew were killed in it and suddenly I became afraid. I have kept the gear, just in case, but things are going very well in my life and I think that now is not the time to jump out of planes." Things are indeed going very well for the 41-year-old actor who was insecure enough to hang onto a secretarial job while turning in a Tony-winning performance in Grand Hotel on Broadway -- and until he was paged to be a part of Evening Shade.

During the 1970s, Burt Reynolds was a box office champ, thanks to such films as 1972's Deliverance, 1974's The Longest Yard, the 1977 comedy Smokey and the Bandit -- the second-highest-grossing film of that year behind Star Wars -- and the 1979 romantic comedy Starting Over. Though he had career ups and downs in the 1980s, his stock rose considerably in the '90s with his Golden Globe award-winning role in the CBS sitcom Evening Shade and his Oscar-nominated turn as a porn producer in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 hit, Boogie Nights.

Q. I have been waiting since the summer for news on the return of NYPD Blue. I finally saw mention in your column that it is coming back in January, as it did last season. I must inform you that last year, NYPD Blue came back in November, not January. - B.P., Plantation A. I must inform you that you are wrong. NYPD Blue had its first episode of the 1999-2000 season on Jan 11. This season, it returns on Jan. 9. Q. In regard to a comment you made, Michael Junior is a 13-year-old who sings like an opera star.

Mystery writers _ and aspiring writers _ who are members of the Sisters in Crime organization now have a chapter a little closer to home. A Florida chapter is being organized by author Karen Ann Wilson. Dues are expected to be about $5 a year. Sisters in Crime _ men are welcomed, too _ offers ideas on book signings, marketing and getting published. You must be a member of the national organization to join the Florida chapter. For more information, write P.O. Box 3596, Seminole, FL 33775 or e-mail (sisterink@compuserve.

By GREG SAITZ The Stuart News and Staff Writer Lori Crouch contributed to this report, December 4, 1996

When you look beyond the millions Burt Reynolds owes to the banks, the credit card companies, the lawyers, the auditors, the tax preparers, the booking agents, the press agents, the production companies and the hair studios, you're left with only a handful of everyday people. And at least one of those everyday people on Tuesday said she's willing to wait for however long it takes Reynolds, who owns homes in Hobe Sound and Jupiter, to straighten out his finances. Laurie Stokes, owner of Laurie's Flash Framers in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

A sex symbol in the '70s. A superstar in the '80s. A flat-broke divorced man in the '90s. Or so goes the highly publicized saga of Burt Reynolds. Reynolds and his ex-wife, Loni Anderson, spent their entire marriage in the spotlight. So it seems only natural they'd spend their divorce - and Reynolds' possible bankruptcy - there, too. "That's one of the Catch-22s of being a celebrity," said Bob Michals, a senior reporter for the Boca Raton-based tabloid The Globe. The latest news is that Reynolds, who lives in Palm Beach County, is in the hole.

The two-year quarrel between Vicki Lawrence and Group W, which distributed her program Vicki!, is over. And Lawrence wasn't the winner. Late last week, Group W dropped the actress/singer/talk show host and created a new show around former Evening Shade star Marilu Henner; it will launch in September. A year ago, after prolonged bickering, Lawrence walked away from her program with about two weeks of production remaining in the first season, citing job-related stress. She was replaced for the remaining shows by guest hosts.

CBS might not be better next season but it will be different. The fall schedule announced on Monday includes nine new series -- four sitcoms and five dramas -- as well as NBC refugee The Hogan Family. One of the new comedies, Evening Shade, stars Burt Reynolds as a high-school football coach in a small Arkansas town. The new lineup does not include Wiseguy, Tour of Duty, Paradise, Valerie Bertinelli`s spring tryout Sydney and seven of the nine series introduced last fall. Also missing are Falcon Crest and Newhart, each of which aired farewell episodes in the past couple of weeks.

Large-scale sculpture is the focus of the latest exhibit at Palm Beach Community College Museum of Art in Lake Worth. Local Large Scale: Works by Palm Beach County Sculptors opens Saturday and runs through July 3. The exhibit will showcase local, working, professional sculptors whose large scale, public works has earned them national or international recognition, museum director Kip Eagen said. The show will bring indoor those works designed for outdoor display. Featured artists include Itzik Asher, Richard BeauLieu, Ann Norton and John Raimondi.

CBS is not resting comfortably on the Nielsen throne. In spite of winning the ratings title for the second season, CBS is undertaking a major shakeup of its prime-time lineup for the 1994-95 season. Seven new series - four hourlong dramas and three sitcoms - will be introduced in the fall. CBS is banking heavily on star power. Among those headlining new series are Dudley Moore, Hal Linden, Suzanne Pleshette, Judith Ivey, Della Reese, Mandy Patinkin, E.G. Marshall and Harvey Fierstein. Discounting the returning movie blocks on Sunday and Tuesday and three news magazines coming back, CBS is replacing more than one-third of its prime-time schedule.

In 1991 Diahann Carroll made the decision it was time to cut back professionally, and she did. She made occasional appearances on episodic TV, but drastically reduced her number of concerts - both solo engagements and those she made in tandem with husband Vic Damone. Now she's in rehearsals for a new act that she will unveil in Atlantic City on April 15. She also guests on tonight's segment of CBS' Burke's Law - and Monday on Evening Shade. Thinking back to her earlier decision to slow down, she says, "I think I was more exhausted than I wanted to admit.